On today's episode of the Gay Business & Marketing Made Easy podcast, I talk to Gina Capristo-Gajdosik, the filmmaker behind the film Make Me Blush! We talk about her personal coming out journey, the journey of being a filmmaker and seeing your project through to the end. This interview is one of the most raw and heartfelt episodes I've done in quite sometime, where you'll learn a bit about the film industry and a lot about how to communicate with your LGBT clientele.
Links mentioned in today's episode:

Today's episode
Make Me Blush: The Movie
Twitter: @MakeMeBlushFilm

Listen to the episode by clicking the play button below!

Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below.
AUDIO TITLE: Episode #60 – The Power of Coming Out
Jenn T Grace:
You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, episode 60.
Intro:
Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace.
Jenn T Grace:
Well hello and welcome to episode number sixty of the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and today I have a really awesome interview for you. In last week's- or I guess the last podcast this month, episode number 59, I as you may recall was having some sort of technological problems with my podcast, and I have since been able to resolve them, so I'm really excited about that. But I did promise you a brand new interview, a brand new episode. And I am very pleased that I can actually deliver on that promise. Because when I promise something and I can't deliver on it, it just destroys me even if it's something as simple as a new podcast for you. So I'm quite pleased today to share with you this new episode.

So a couple of things that I want to mention before I really kind of dive into who I'm speaking with today, is in the last podcast I mentioned that I have a new webinar, so I want to talk about that briefly again if you don't mind, because I'm super excited about this new webinar called Sales and Marketing Strategies for Reaching LGBT Customers. And the primary objective of the webinar is to help you find, market and sell to the LGBT community in as few steps as possible. So this webinar is just under an hour or so, it's available on my website, you can go and find a date that makes sense for you to come and attend the webinar. And you'll just learn a whole bunch of stuff as it relates to really thinking about how you're going to market your product, service, business, et cetera to the LGBT community. You know it covers things like how to target, what LGBT clients are going to be right for your business, and how- it'll give you some tips and tricks around how to make sure that you're not treating your LGBT marketing efforts as one big mass marketing approach, and identifying things like what pain points are specific to your LGBT clients that may not be pain points for other clients of yours. So that's really kind of the short and dirty of the new webinar, so again you could head over to www.JennTGrace.com/webinars and you can totally check that out there.

The other thing that I wanted to mention is I have not mentioned my running endeavors recently; and to be honest I don't even know if I told you that I was running a half marathon in May. So this episode is airing on May 28th, if you're listening to this live, the day it comes out. But I actually ran a half marathon earlier this month in the first weekend in May.

Listen to this great (and entertaining) interview with Heather Cox as we discuss -

• Supplier Diversity

• LGBT Business Certification

• Certification as a marketing tool

• Buying from each other

I had a chance to sit down with Heather Cox of Certify My Company recently and ask her a series of questions around supplier diversity and certification. We talk about LGBT certification, women-owned certification, disability-owned certification, veteran-owned and minority-owned, etc. She teaches us about NAICS codes, the Small Business Association and her past experience as an acro-gymanst! Hit the play button above or head over to iTunes to listen to her answers.

This week I am talking with Heather Cox, the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Certify My Company, which is a diversity certification business. She helps women, minority business owners and LGBT businesses that qualify; certify their businesses to become part of the ranks and privileges that certification brings.

Welcome to the show Heather are you ready to get started?
Before we get into the heavy topic of supplier diversity and certification I have to ask you - how did you get from being a acro-gymnast, tight rope walker and juggler to working in the diversity space?
Now that we have a bit about your background lets get down to basics. On this show and on my blog I bring up supplier diversity and certification quite a bit. My goal is to demystify this for my audience. Could you share what exactly supplier diversity is and how it can benefit the business owners listening to this?
So now that we have a foundation of what supplier diversity is, could you elaborate more on what certification is and what the process looks like with a specific emphasis on LGBT?
So let's talk about misconceptions. I imagine you probably get statements like "I don't want to get business just because I am a woman or just because I am LGBT?" Can you address that for those listening? And talk about any other common misconceptions that
Oftentimes when I speak with business owners the thought of going through so many hoops to be certified seems daunting, could you share a bit about how CMC can make that process less painful?
It's evident that you love what you do and are very knowledge in this space. If you could give one piece of advice to businesses owners who are considering becoming certified what would it be?
Back in February I had Jennifer Brown of Jennifer Brown Consulting on this show and she spoke about how she uses her dual certification both as a woman and LGBT to her advantage in her marketing. Could you share one piece of advice or nugget of wisdom with the listeners on how they could leverage their status in their marketing efforts?
On a similar note, as an entrepreneur yourself. What is one piece of business advice that you would give to your fellow entrepreneurs listening?
And our final question of the day - and this question always yields interesting responses. What is one thing about your business that you are really excited about, right now?